The human mind is a very intricate part of the human form, very complex, but in some ways, very predictable. One of the things that make the human mind quite predictable is conditioning. Most people don’t even realise that the way they think, and behave, has been conditioned by external sources. In fact, most of what we think, and do, has been predetermined by other people. From the day we were born, and even before that, our human behaviour has been patterned so that very little is left to unique and creative ways of living and being.

Everyone likes to think that their ways of doing things, or their beliefs, or their thoughts, are strictly individual, a creation of their own minds. The fact is, for the most part, we are just playing roles that we’ve been trained to play, fed, not only by experiences from birth, but also from generation upon generation of handed down, conditioned behaviours from our ancestors, and from humanity as a whole.

Simply put, we are lost in our own minds, in a never-ending cycle of conditioned thought patterns. The really crazy part about this is, anyone who does not conform to these patterns is usually considered wrong, insane, weird, dangerous, criminal, or many other defensive terms, which are used to bolster the egos of those who need to be right.

So, as we live, what we consider to be, ‘our’ lives, we make choices that determine which direction ‘our’ lives will take. However, we don’t have a life. Life is not something you can have, it’s not a thing. Life is what we are, not a possession. Making individual choices is something that life allows for, but ultimately, none of those choices really matter all that much. Life is what happens, whether it is what we choose, or something different. Resisting life will only cause suffering, in one way or another. Letting life take us where it will, and allowing what is to be as it is, without resistance, is true living.

It makes no sense to resist what already is. We can’t change that. We can only make choices, and then live with the consequences, fully allowing the results of those choices to be as they are, even if the results of those choices are not what we wanted. This is a very key point. Resisting, either externally, or internally, what we don’t want, will ultimately cause the suffering that we are so desperately trying to avoid. Allowing whatever is, to be, and realising that this is life, will bring us into alignment with life, which is what we are.

I often use the term “go with the flow”, as in the flow of a river. Trying to swim against the flow is futile, and a waste of energy. Going with the flow, and allowing it to take us where it will, even if it’s somewhere we don’t want to go, is letting life take the lead. Life, the totality, the universe, the cosmos, or whatever we call it, has a way of working out, and we can’t know, or understand how this is. Just like all other life forms, we have limitations, even though we like to think that our learning ability is unlimited, it is not. What we can comprehend is definitely limited by the natural abilities of our minds. For example, the human mind cannot conceptualise timelessness. We needed to create seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years, in order to be able to create a concept we call time, which takes a seemingly linear format. In fact, what we see as linear time, is not linear at all, it would be more correct to compare what the word time points to, as a vertical axis, which we might refer to as the ‘now axis’.

Everything that happens happens now. There is no past or future, except in our thoughts, which themselves, by their very nature, are just temporary forms. In fact, I can confidently predict when any single person will die. They will die now. There is no other time that they can die. They were born now, and they will die now. It cannot happen at any other time, because there is no other time. This is what happens when the human mind interferes with natural processes, which it can’t possibly understand. We create beliefs, and stand by them as if they were universal truths, when, in fact, they are just limited thought forms that give us the impression that we know. If the human mind cannot ‘know’ something, it will create a solution, and then declare it as the truth, so that we no longer have to fear the unknown. The choice is ours. We can decide to exist in this ‘manufactured’ way of living, or we can just allow life to happen, as it was meant to be, and let it take us where it will, knowing that there are forces beyond our comprehension guiding the life that we are in the direction we need to go.

This does not mean, however, that we just throw our hands up in the air and wait for life to take us where it will. We go about whatever it is that we want to do, and we take our cues from life as it happens. Life will nudge us, in one way or another, in the direction it wants us to go. If we don’t take heed of those nudges, then life will sometimes provide something more substantial, that is harder to ignore. I usually refer to this as suffering, although it can take many forms. It could be something as simple as a discontented feeling, or it could manifest as what appears to be a catastrophic loss. It’s all relative to each individuals unique life experience, but ultimately, from a much broader perspective, there’s nothing bad or good about it, it’s just the natural evolution of life, and we can choose to either fight it, or go along for the ride.